Re: Validating Social Security integers. Help!!!!!!!!!

From:
"James Kanze" <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
3 Apr 2007 06:42:34 -0700
Message-ID:
<1175607754.336259.193770@q75g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>
On Apr 2, 6:07 pm, rlueneb...@gmail.com wrote:

Finally works after your suggestions. I just changed a couple of
things. The code looks cleaner too and I don't have to deal with
integer inputs. I thought that storing SSN as integer data member
would be easier to manipulate.


It is, in a way. If you store it as an int, it's a lot easier
to multiply two SSN's, for example. "Easier to manipulate"
isn't necessarily an advantage, until you define the
manipulations.

But turns out to be a problem. I don't
like to save formated data in data members but that is part of the
assignment. Please send your comments.

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include "stdafx.h"
#include <ctype.h>

using namespace std;

class Employee
{
   protected:


Just a question: why protected? I rarely have protected data,
and then there is a very good reason. In this case, you don't
have a virtual destructor, so it is probable that the class
isn't meant to be inherited from anyway. As a general rule,
everything should be as restricted as possible.

      // Full Name
      string name;
      // Employee Number
      char EmployeeNumber[5];


Which is a wierd declaration. What is it, text or a number?

      // Social Security Number
      string SocialSecurity;
      // Hire Date
      string HireDate;
   public:
      // constructor
      Employee()
      {
         SocialSecurity="";
      }

      string getSSN(string MySSN)
      {
         return FormatSSN(MySSN);
      }

      string getName(string MyName)
      {
         name="";
         return MyName;
      }

      // Destructor
      ~Employee() {}

      bool IsValidSSN(string SSN)
      {
         bool valid = true;

         if (SSN.length()> 9)
         {
            valid=false;
         }


That has to be wrong. At the very least, you should allow
leading and trailing spaces.

         char c[10];
         strncpy (c,SSN.c_str(),10);

         for (int i=0; i<9; i++)
         {
            if (!isdigit(c[i]))
            {
               valid=false;
               break;
            }
         }
         return valid;
      }

      string FormatSSN(string SSN)
      {
            char c[10];
            strncpy (c,SSN.c_str(),10);

            for (int i=0; i<9; i++)
            {
               // Converts char to valid string
               std::string s(1, c[i]);
               if (i==2)
               {
                  SocialSecurity = SocialSecurity + s + "-";
               }else if (i==4) {
                  SocialSecurity = SocialSecurity + s + "-";
               }else{
                  SocialSecurity = SocialSecurity + s;
               }
            }
            return SocialSecurity;
      }


What you've written is simply the equivalent of:

    SocialSecurity = SSN.substr( 0, 3 )
                + '-' + SSN.substr( 3, 2 )
                + '-' + SSN.substr( 5 ) ;

Why not write it that way, and be done with it?

Also: what is the correct format: a string of digits, or a
string of digits with some separators? You don't want to output
one format, and require input in another. (The obvious way of
validating the input would be to use boost::regex. I'd reformat
it to the target format at the same time, catching the numeric
substrings in the regular expression, and pasting them together
more or less like the above.)

};

class EmployeePay: public Employee


EmployeePay is an Employee? Either the names are wrong, or using
inheritance is wrong.

And of course, if you're going to do this sort of derivation,
you need a virtual destructor in the base class.

--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
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